Le Cerise Blue

I've just got home, stupidly. But when you're tired and stressed somehow being even more tired doesn't seem to matter. Drinking in bar of above name, cheese plate and all. My brain isn't working very well now, so probably not a good moment to be writing, but there you go. I should have been reading guide books in preparation for taking a bus load of American teenagers to destinations I haven't been to in France. I'm going to have to do a lot of Lecoq style question inverting... 'well, which mountain do you think Mont Blanc is'. I did this in the summer and followed similar tactics 'it's a garden', 'it's a church' etc. when asked the generic 'what that?' question.

Was in the bar with W****** ,S***** and N**. It was one of the funniest evenings I've had in a long time. We were having the standards, 'what did you do before you came to lecoq' conversation but the answers were way above average.

N** directed a production of 'Hair' with teenagers in jail. I think this was somehow supposed to encourage them to join the Israeli army. Hair is a pacifist musical. (Dear God, that such a term exists!) If I understood correctly Israel has military service, so in order to get out of, 'killing Arabs' my friend pretended to be mad in his interview with the doctor. As he is both intelligent and a good actor he didn't just have a normal conversation with the doctor and then try and jump out the window at the end of the session. Instead he, subtly, told the doctor that he 'always had to get in the shower first and would get very angry if he couldn't' and that he 'had to eat first when in the canteen' or he'd get very angry. It worked a treat. They found him seriously unbalanced - so they sent him to work with children!!

Meanwhile in Vienna S***** was trying to get into the Austrian equivalent of RADA. For her speeches she chose Metosopheles from Faust, Hinkel from Chaplin's film 'The Great Dictator' and, because her friend insisted she do at least one female speech, Medea. S**** is very keen on costume and props. She always has a huge sack of props stashed away and appears the most unlikely of things at a moments notice. Very useful for autocours. She told us that she had carefully planned her speeches so she could change from costume to costume very quickly and that it was most efficient if she started with Hinkel.

So, in she goes. There they are behind the desk. She gets into her Hinkel costume, just as he is in the Great Dictator, suit and little Hitler moustache. She does the speech, which seems to go down well and then goes behind the screen to change into her next costume which is for Medea. By the time she comes out her nerves are getting the better of her and in order to calm herself and keep in control (!!) she improvises and does the speech with a Swiss accent.
'Why Swiss?' I asked.
'Weeeel, the swees accent is veery sloowe, you know?'
Well, I do now. Unfortunately as well as doing Medea very slowly and Swiss she had forgotten to take off her Hitler moustache. Perhaps unsurprisingly the audition panel were in fits of laughter by the time she finished.
'What do you want to do?' they asked her. 'Do you want to play Juliet in Romeo and Juliet?'
'No' she replied.
'You're a clown' they told her.
So she came to learn to be a clown. But before that she worked as a road sweeper with lots of alcoholics. At first they didn't think she could do the job, but when she showed them, convinced them they were delighted.
'We're going to the pub' they'd tell her, at 7am in the morning. Give us a sign if the boss comes. Which as she's so nice she probably would have done.
Phew! Bed. I'm knackered.